Wes Borland Talks Next Limp Bizkit Album, Life Without DJ Lethal + More

In the first part of our chat with Wes Borland, he unveiled all the details on his side project Black Light Burns. With a new album that just hit store shelves and a tour on the horizon with this band, many would think Borland wouldn’t be able to put anything else on his plate.

In part two of the interview, Borland explains that he’s not slowing down and discusses the status of Limp Bizkit‘s next studio record. The guitarist also opens up about DJ Lethal and tells us why you should never mess with Dream Theater.

It’s been nearly six months since Limp Bizkit signed with Cash Money Records. How are things going with your next record, ‘Stampede of the Disco Elephants?’

Well, there are a couple of record titles floating around and a couple of record directions that we thought about going. We’ve had several studio sessions now where we’ve been writing. They’ve been kind of short, three songs here, two songs there, four songs here. We’ve been writing in different ways. As of right now, I can’t say that the beginning of a record has started to form. Whenever I’m making a record – I don’t know if this is true for other musicians – there’s a certain point in the writing process where the record shows its face for the first time and you go, “Ahh, so that’s what it looks like, this is what we’re building off of, this is the focal point.” That might be a couple of songs that work together or three songs that all sound like they belong together with a couple of other ones that seem like they could be a good pivot point to break into different dynamics on the record. There is always a point, and we have not reached that point yet. Right now, we’re kind of just shooting things at the wall to see if they stick.

Do you have an end in sight?

No frickin’ way. [Laughs] There is no release date in sight whatsoever. It might be a year from now, who knows. Whenever we’re doing a Limp Bizkit record, we always say we’ll be done by this time and then no way are we ever done by that time. We’re always way over.

When I mentioned ‘Stampede of the Disco Elephants,’ you said there are actually a couple of record titles floating around.

That’s one record that we have a definite idea about. We released this really, kind of strange EP called ‘The Unquestionable Truth’ in 2005 when we got back together and realized that we were still in the period of hating and not forgiving each other, and then we broke up again. We made that record, it was really different for us, kind of more raw and heavy sounding. We’re actually talking about following up that with another record that is sort of raw and heavy sounding as well. We were hoping to do ‘The Unquestionable Truth Part 2′ and ‘Stampede of the Disco Elephants’ at the same time. That still might happen, I just feel like we’ve got a lot of artillery right now and no structure to put it in. But, we’re going to amass that somehow. Hopefully a lot of the ideas we’ve been working on find their place and fall into one idea or the other, or they might fall into something completely new. As I said, we’re not very far along in the process of making all of this happen.

How are things with drummer John Otto? He was in the thick of it all with DJ Lethal, who’s now out of the band. How is John doing?

He’s good. He’s doing great. We had some personal trouble with John and Lee [Lethal] on the tour and we talked about it when the tour was over. John got it together and made an effort to change some things in his life and behaviors he was having. Now he’s all good. Lee got really irritated about these things and about us thinking that certain things he was doing in his life were problems, and we can’t have the threat of people and the things that he wants to do invade the health of our touring vehicle. Things were getting more and more stressful. We had a tour this year without him and it was no problem. It was fine, it was just the four of us. I’m not saying Lee will never be involved again, but we’ll see.

Have you talked with DJ Lethal lately?

No, not really. He’s been very volatile online as far as the things he’s said, he’s gone on rampages. Before we talk to him again, that stuff needs to come to a close. He needs to take all the things that he’s been saying online and figure out why he’s saying those things. He needs to talk to us in private instead of making it public. Then we might be able to have something to work on and move forward with.

When you left Bizkit several years back, it seemed like there was tension between you and Fred Durst. What’s your current relationship like?

Well, we figured that we’d never be able to function if we didn’t start with a clean slate. If we were holding each other responsible for things we did in our younger years, we would never be able to move forward. What we decided to when we got back together and talked again in 2008, we said “Alright, what we’re going to do is only react to current behavior, not hold onto anything we’ve done in the past.” We changed our actions and reactions to things that happen now, not things that have happened in the past. Now we’ve become friends, which we never were before. It’s been really great. I don’t think people fundamentally change, but I do think they refine themselves and they get a new set of tools to deal with people as they age. They get better at being compromising. Both of us are gigantic babies, and we’d go, “No, I want it my way.” We wouldn’t talk about it, but now we do.

I’m sure that will come across in the new album.

Yes sir.

Before I let you go, I’ve got to ask: Do you still hate Dream Theater?

I don’t hate Dream Theater. I’ve always felt that I’m kind of a painter and a songwriter that ended up learning how to play guitar just to get what I wanted to get across, across. Someone on Twitter was saying, “You’re no John Petrucci.” Come on, man. Who cares? What’s so great about Dream Theater? Are they writing amazing songs? I don’t get it. Then it was just an avalanche. So I went, “Oh, goodie,” and kept throwing gas on the fire. I thought it was funny at the time. I couldn’t believe people picked the story up. It was a good learning experience that no matter what you do on Twitter somebody is going to report on it. I actually met [ex-Dream Theater drummer] Mike Portnoy and talked to him about it. He said, “Yeah man, you can’t mess with Dream Theater Fans.” I guess they’ll never let it die. Lesson learned.

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